Case
The employees’ reactions to Burt’s speech demonstrate the most common way of analyzing organizational problems – blame somebody – in this case The Boss. The employees seem to consider his personality to be the problem. Could there be something else going on?
Overview
Mr. Robert is the Owner and Manager of Tool Craft Firm. He has built up the firm in a Specialized Market that has allowed him to hold his own firm against the Big Box stores and Firms and considered among the best firms. His employees are unhappy with him and they blame him about all the false happenings in the firms, regarding quality, orders delivery and miscommunications. While, boss has proud and believe on his staff and he want them to do it again has they did it before because they could.
Q.1. Analyze the whole situation in terms of what you now know about organizational structure.
The firm now has 17 employees; 7 in the office and the store (including 4 family members) and 10 in the warehouse. Everybody in the front office can do all of the jobs involved in selling in the store; taking orders on the phone; creating the paper requests for the warehouse; managing office machines and supplies and dealing with customer complaints. One person also acts as a part-time bookkeeper.
Q.2 How this case demonstrates the structure, context, strategy and issues of one of the types?
This Case shows two different perspectives:
1: The employees are unhappy with the owner and they declared him responsible for all the happenings.
2: The owners have proud on his team and have believe they will do it again and has they did it before.
Mr. Robert has a brief talk to the staff because he wants them to rise to the challenges of an increasing number of orders and covers those effectively. Therefore, they could achieve the target effectively on time. He said, Guys you have to pull together and strong to help we stay ahead of demand. Our business is really happening and producing quality result. Our quick-response and delivery on time service keeps us out in front of the competitors. We cannot afford any kind of mistake or misbehave with our customers by providing wrong tools delivered to wrong customers, paperwork errors, and lousy manners on the phone. OK? I do not want to hear any more complaints from customers. We need them happy by providing quality services
Hey, we have done a great work as a best team in the past when things were very tough, so let us stand together again that our sales are growing and demanding. I know we have a lot to do but that is because people want what we have to sell. The more they buy, the more we make. We just have to try harder to be perfect and efficient. OK? Let us go do it and stand tall again.
As he walks out, a group of employees starts to talk.
Employee 1: A team, Is he crazy? More like a mob. That is how mistakes made. Robert would never tell anybody what to do anymore because he does not want to offend his family. He is turning into wimp and draining the performance of firm.
Employee 2: It is chaos, for sure. In the warehouse, we sometimes do not know exactly who is making what order for what customer. Robert supposed to be in charge but he is never around. Personally, I think he likes those sales lunches more than he likes the hard work of making this place run.
Employee 3: On top of that, he is cheap too. When want to get new forklift truck to speed up the unloading and undue burden. He said the one we had been fine. How would he know? He does not use it. That old piece of junk we were using now really slows us down.
Employee 4: Hey, I have been here a long time and I think the problem is the manager is just scared to say No to any customer. He is always promising them; we can get you whatever you need, just name it.
Employee 5: Hello, just when I finally get a bit of a system going with some of the orders for our regular customers, some crazy guy I never heard of is on the phone demanding a tool we don’t even stock, just because He promised.
Q.3. From your analysis make two practical suggestions for change that could be useful to improve this situation.
Problems
1: Undue burden on Staff
2: Lack of Information about a customer
3: Lack of awareness among staff members regarding their job
4: Unavailability of latest technology
Here I have got to practical suggestion:
Suggestion 1:
Owner should resolve the employees concerns. When he resolves their concerns, they will provide more quality work and will help to maintain its high reputation. He should have to arrange the meeting with his employees to solve their concerns and provide his feedback more briefly with useful instructions.
Suggestion 2:
Employees should aware their owner regarding the problem. Therefore, they could feel them in ease and get some useful instructions from the owner. It will help them to do their task more patiently and effectively.
Conclusion:
This Case shows the key problems currently exist in the Tool Craft Firm. It also provides the important suggestions to overcome these problems. By solving these problems, the performance and quality of firm will be increase and will maintain its high standard as well. One side it will increase the product and its quality on the other side it will stand top among the competitors.